Tablets of Meaning
Orange Kubota — long black claw — impersonates T-Rex
or a sabre-tooth tiger picking bones of the old Texaco —
exposing veins, organs, splattering guts of the pumps
recalling fossils from whence they came that time when
Earth stood there winking at the minor prophets,
their tablets of meaning, stood there by the freeway
shouting like Amos with his hair on fire in rush hour
in a place where ponies once wore
colors of the tribes and ran for their supper.
Tears of the Locust
Beginning to be drenched by all the crying
long black pea pods
my grandmother’s black veil
entwined in a rosary –
three lost lovers
small oak leaves stuck to tires of an old Prius
parked under purple fade
mingling with the rutted asphalt of the living.
Bruce Lowry, a Louisiana native, is a writer, editor and poet. His work has appeared in several journals, including Carve, December, Dos Passos Review, Platform Review, Poet Lore, and the Paterson Literary Review. His chapbook, Boyhood, Louisiana, was published in 2019. He lives in Union County, New Jersey.